Everything Begins to Melt — Earth Heat Flow

Everything Begins to Melt Here...

Please follow me, visitors from the gentle world, you are bathing in the sun in the warm winter of Beijing.

The so-called “cosmic microwave background radiation” is the thin air with hazy glow here. Yes, we are “thermal” animals, just like the fact that you are visual animals. For us, “heat” cannot be naturally divided. It always disperses, germinates, entangles itself, and travels at will, and you seem to have the ability to decompose, transport, cut off, transmit and even purify it.

Freon keeps your skin dense and even in summer. You create pure heat blocks with clear geometric edges and name them “microwave oven” and “skating rink.” The heat crawls along the electric tower, optical fiber, and power grid section by section, outlining the ambiguous universe in our eyes, rising one after another. You have even constructed a profound tone that we rarely see. It is on a square called a quantum computer in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (to quote your description of “heat”). It operates below 15 degrees Kelvin, “colder” than outer space. As for the high-energy sustained pulse in Joint European Torus near Oxford, UK, in our eyes, it can almost rival the roar of the sun.

There are many pieces of material evidence about your gentle world that we have collected: red glowing tubes, orange light films, instruments for tracking the sun’s path, and devices for detecting electromagnetic landscapes. Visitors from the gentle world, you do not always agree with each other: some of you are obsessed with domiciling heat, while others are interested in the hidden, escaping, and discrete heat and are even able to smell the red backbite bred by the chaotic mother earth. Even if it is not as extreme as the UV disaster imagined by Ellen Feist, it does make the glacier retreat and the sea rise.

Please make a turn here, visitors from the gentle world. Although you are outstanding heat managers, unlike us, who cannot isolate the “heat” feeling for the existence of heat synesthesia, at least at some moments, we can understand each other’s feelings. In 1859, the solar storm nearly destroyed the telegraph system that was taking shape back then. Many of you, like us, witnessed the strange flash in the polar sky. You, smart people, have realized that the answer to “heat” is sometimes buried in ice. Scientists among you are chasing the history of these solar storms from the nitrogen oxides deposited in the thin layer of ice core rich in nitrate. Data and genes of everything are right there in Svalbard Archipelago in the polar circle, with more probes stretching to coal and oil under the ice cover. You will tactfully describe the answer as the politics of energy, climate, and technology. The cycle of heat and cold entangles solar radiation, polar permafrost, and lithosphere. Narrow roads sometimes emerge in the area where the glaciers are fading. You are driving to the past when you drive here and track the irretrievable edge of the ice.

Presumably, you also find that this is a place where some entropy chaos were accidentally sealed. In a sense, we are you in the past or the remote future. To us, the appearance of iron does not mean the death of stars. Entropy is no longer a secret. Neither is the end of life a sigh. We never read the fluctuation of mercury in the scale or managed to tame the heat in a room of several square feet. We never built a heating network covering the city or a machine eye to detect the temperature of everything, but we grasped the existence of “heat” on a larger scale. “Heat” is in our eyes and bodies, surging at its will like hurricanes and eddies connecting the core of the earth and the sun or continuous fog under the ice field. In fact, the combination of hot sun and dark and cold sky leads to the existence of low entropy. The world is never really gentle.

Now, I'm going back to the solar time. I hope you will enjoy your stay here, visitors from the gentle world.

请同我来，来自温和世界的访客，你沐浴在北京的冬日暖阳里。

那被你们称为“宇宙微波背景辐射”的东西，在我们这里是闪烁着氤氲微光的稀薄空气，没错，我们是“热觉”动物，就像你们是视觉动物一样。对我们来说，“热”天然无法被切分，它永远弥散，萌生，缠绕自身，随性游走，而你们似乎拥有分解，运送，截断，传导乃至提纯它的能力。

氟利昂让你们的皮肤在夏天总是保持致密均匀的色调，你们制造出有清晰几何边缘的纯粹热量块，给它们起名微波炉和滑冰场。热沿着电塔、光纤和电网逐节爬动，让我们眼里的暧昧宇宙长出此起彼伏的轮廓线。你们甚至构造了我们极少见的深邃影调，那是在帕萨迪纳的喷气推进实验室里，被称为量子计算机的方块上——引用你们对“热”的描述，它在15度开尔文以下运转，这可比外层空间还“冷”。至于在英国牛津附近的欧洲联合环发生的那次高能持续脉冲，在我们看来，简直差点赶上太阳的嘶吼。

这里有许多我们搜集来的，关于温和世界的物证：发出赤色辉光的电子管、橙色的光膜，还有追踪太阳轨迹的仪器和探测电磁景观的装置。温和世界访客们，你们似乎也并不总是意见一致：你们中的一些人痴迷于驯化热，而另一些似乎更感兴趣那些隐蔽、逃逸、离散的热，甚至嗅到了混沌的大地母体正在孕育的赤红反噬——它纵然不会像埃伦菲斯特想象的紫外灾难那么极端，但诚然会让冰川隐退，海面升起。

请在这里转弯，来自温和世界的访客。虽然你们是出类拔萃的热管理者，而我们因为热联觉的存在无法把“热”感孤立出来，但至少在某些瞬间，我们可以理解彼此的感受。1859年，太阳风暴近乎摧毁了当时刚刚形成的电报系统，你们中的不少人，同我们一样看见了极圈天空中奇谲的闪光。聪明的你们已经意识到，“热”的答案有时掩埋在冰里，你们中的科学家正从富含硝酸盐的薄层冰芯里所沉积的氮氧化物中，追捕这些太阳风暴的历史，极圈里的斯瓦尔巴岛收留了数据和万物基因，还有更多的探针，正在伸向冰盖之下的煤和石油。你们会拗口地将这答案描述为关于能源、气候和技术的政治，热与冷的循环把太阳辐射、极地冻土和岩石圈纠缠在一起。在冰川褪去的地带，有时会浮现出狭窄的道路，当你们驾驶在这里，追踪着不复可见的冰缘时，便是在驶向过去。

想必你也发现了，这里是不小心被封存的一段熵值混乱的时空。我们某种意义上是过去的你们，或者极远未来的你们，对我们来说，铁元素的出现并不意味着恒星的死亡，熵不再是秘密，生命尽头也未必是一声叹息。我们从来不阅读量表里水银的涨落，也无法将热驯服在几尺见方的房间，我们不曾造出覆盖城市的供暖网络，或是检测万物温度的机器眼睛，但我们在更大的尺度上把握着“热”的存在。 “热”在我们的眼里和身里，仍然自由翻涌，如连通地核与太阳的飓风与漩涡，抑或冰原之下连绵的雾霭。其实，是炽热太阳与暗冷天空的结合，才导致了低熵的存在，世界从未真正温和。

现在，我要回到太阳的时间里去了，希望你们在这里停留得愉快，来自温和世界的访客。